Don't Encourage Would-be Aggressors

March 08, 1996

Defense Secretary William J. Perry's comment last month that ``we don't know what we would do'' if China attacked Taiwan was one of those mistakes that can result in war.

Perhaps it's only semantics. But Mr. Perry could have taken a much stronger line against a potential invasion or missile attack on Taiwan that would have shown Washington's grave concern without seeming to commit the United States to any specific response.

After Mr. Perry's remarks, China announced it will conduct missile tests off Taiwan.

Careless signals do have consequences. In 1990, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq suggested to Saddam Hussein that the Bush administration would not get involved in Iraq's quarrel with Kuwait over borders and oil fields. The Baghdad despot took that as a guarantee that the United States would not respond to an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Saddam's reading of confused American signals led to the Persian Gulf War.

Former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, in criticizing Mr. Perry for his remarks on Taiwan, noted that President Harry S. Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, said that Korea was of no strategic importance to the United States before North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950.

Similarly, statements by officials in two administrations that U.S. national interests were not at stake in the Balkans probably helped to fuel the Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia.

The Clinton administration might not know today -- or does not want to say -- precisely what it might do if China were to attack Taiwan. But it should not give even the slightest encouragement to the saber rattlers in Beijing who want to absorb the island. That's playing with fire.